A Mock Heroic poem by Mahfuz Ali Milton
Mahfuz Ali Milton: A young post colonial poet from Bangladesh. Mahfuz is a Bangladeshi writer. He obtained M.A in English Literature from the Department of English, University of Dhaka. He is a regular writer, columnist and translator of the Daily Star, an English national daily of the country. He has finished writing a novel in English. He has written many poems in English. For him the means of communication is English. Many of his writings got published in some Indian journals. Under the circumstances, he is looking for a literary agent or publisher who will enable him to emerge as a writer in the vast realm of Western Literature.
The Kingdom of Bin Laden
By Mahfuz
Who lets it stand
Within the prospect of his knowledge
That there, from an unknown spot
Of the earth, emerges
A mammalian species--- imbued with inconceivable human attribute--
Not succumbing defiantly
To the overflow of irresistible magnetism,
Extracted out of Krishna’s magic pipe mellifluously?
No-one, not even Teiresias who kept abreast of the realm
Of time, unearthing the unfathomable mystery behind all matters;
And everywhere from the enigmatic firmament
Of the great universe
Down to nature, all earth-bound
Or celestial creatures never feel restrained
To rhapsodize with lilting charm
Over the sweetest tune of the god’s bamboo-flute,
Making pilgrimage to the span of life joyfully warm.
In an uncontrollable, fiery, violent mood--
Symptomatic of a big blow
To the earth--- the restive sky, appearing as if ready
To rain down thunder or lightning without becoming slow,
Lapses into a serene, peaceful state
In communion with the god, not accepting
The cyclone or whirlwind as her mate.
Homo sapiens identical with the fairest dream,
Or with the foulest scheme;
The fearsome hood the Cobra rears;
The mildest spirit the Lamb bolsters;
The Tiger, lying in ambush, falls upon the Deer,
Hacking the helpless victim limb from limb once so fair;
To the god they all
Prostrate themselves reverentially,
Forestalling some wicked spirit that must lure them
On to the act of annihilation mercilessly.
Leaping into and out of Heaven,
And staying afloat
At the ethereal, smooth road of level air,
All angelic spirits sound the name of Krishna.
How jubilantly they render the marvels
Of creation rhythmic and fair!
But the words oozing out of Bin Laden,
Sounded a universal holocaust
Along interminable edges of Earth and Heaven,
Fuelling Armageddon all among
Against the run of the loveliest spirit,
Deeply imprinted along with other
Secrets and truths, numbered in myriads,
In the consciousness of the Child of Time
Who minutely scans
The rise and fall
Of hundreds of antique civilizations,
And up-to-minute events,
Geared up to the highest intensity of motion:
‘Oh Krishna! Too immoral and drear
Thy practice against the credibility I bear!
Better wallow in putrid mire,
Not letting the same inspiration encroach upon others’ ethical fiber.
The god of music you are,
And the sacrosanct human situations you contaminate and mar,
Under the vilest contagion of your instrument, playing foulest of all,
And throwing human senses into a domain whence they roll.
Therefore am I come forth to pour scorn
Upon you, seeking my god’s benediction.
The honor of the greatest king of all ages and the worthiest fellows
With the highest reputation I, at my disposal, hold,
And they come to be cast in my ethical mould.
Homage and loyalty I never proffer to thy services;
I, from the bottom of my heart saturated with devotion,
And with a rock-solid determination,
Find it exhilarating
To tend towards divorcing
The sheer exuberance of thy power--
Though pervasively perceived in human-breath every hour---
From the interior and exterior of my Dukedom;
And against all forms of natural loveliness, freshness and softness,
The alarm bells of my conscience sound at random.
So, a thing harder than ever before,
And the roughest of all,
Must whelm us evermore,
Constituting my soul and those of my beloved disciples.
Oh, the most fruitful law of the jungle!
How exactly thou make my inner voice bangle!
The thunder of thy shouting is attuned
With the blessing of my lord;
And thou keep racing
Through the boding heart of my god.’
So devotedly was the King pledge--bound
To shape up an unmusical Dukedom---
A dream, blossoming amidst the splendors
Of lofty imperial position, awe,
Admiralty as well as armed forces
And aspiring towards the construction of a New Rome---
That he toiled every moment
To brain the solemn instrument,
Letting the holy mission in him become strong,
And giving credence to the fact: all other things are wrong.
Not a single hour, day, week, month or year
For something else to be exhausted,
So, a prolonged battle until the proudest moment of jubilee,
He, from his sense, never ousted.
An overwhelming restive mood;
A time-consuming, injurious passion
Fraught with boundless frustration;
A corroding heartache;
With the heaviest stresses and strains,
As much as human brain ever underwent
Or the world witnessed,
Each psychological attribute gnawed at him at full gallop,
And proved instrumental in raising a bar
To eating, sleeping or even responding
To the call of nature.
One day all of a sudden
There ensued, under a web
Of the mysterious, tumultuous foam of calamity---
A terrible thing that tuned
Up within the glimpses of human brain,
The wheezing noise of hunting fears and worries.
The sunny richness of noon, dissolving
In a mournful gloom,
And brooding over nature;
A matter looming larger and larger;
By then countless revolvers, guns, rifles, canons, pistols
Letting the atmosphere surge through riddles,
Flashed out the most terrifying light
As if the barbarians had started smothering
The booming intrinsic force of human civilization.
And within a moment the deadly weapons butchered
Thousands of cuckoos, lying perched
On some big mango trees, standing next to each other,
About half a mile away form the gorgeous spot
Where Laden’s Palace is found lying.
And the king started croaking:
‘Eureka, Eureka, Eureka.’
Then came hundreds of youngsters,
Clad in white pajamas,
Around the Palatial Building,
Who growing concerned
About not a single matter of human feelings or emotions,
Frenziedly stamped their feet down on tins,
Paused for a moment and hit
Thereon most heavily with the iron-bars.
The King, positioned on a golden throne, clapped
His hands and greeted them with hell-shout:
‘Marhaba! Marhaba! Marhaba!
What a sweet noise!’
The arrogant boys bred
A tinderbox out of their violent action.
They boastfully swaggered,
And they, at long last, boldly declared
The arrival of God-given counselors
Who hailed from four planets not yet discovered.
The strangers each--- although squirting
From unknown realms of the universe--- had a physique,
Resembling that of human being.
The art of speaking
As well as understanding
Human language, they all mastered
Under the care of Bin .
Tajeban was descended from Karkastan, a planet,
A name, no longer tangential
To the auditory sense of Astronauts,
And jumping, rolling as well as somersaulting
Thousands of feet below or above the cultural heredity
That consolidates the strongest foundation of the wisest men
Of both the East and West.
The creature of normal human-stature--- structurally similar
To Homo sapiens,
Yet possessing so long,
Near about half a mile, a beard as to strike a sense
Of surprise and fear into the hearts of all courtiers---
Became a matter of whisper to them.
But the King going
Crimson and throwing
A tantrum at the relentless droning
Murmur of their voices:
‘A man with so long a beard!’
Threw a presumptuous glance at them.
And he started scolding them:
‘It’s a divine gift, bestowing
The benediction of the Almighty upon all creatures;
It’s a spiritual protector
Against the mightiest evil spirit
That produces a trail blazing, rhythmic
Intensity of the highest order;
It’s a heavenly wall
Against what is music to human ears, serving
The biggest purpose of Kingdom;
It’s a stark reminder of blaspheme
And other forms of knowledge, infiltrating
Into human mind and annihilating its Edenic idyll;
It’s the strongest crusader, keeping vigil
Day in, day out, morning, noon and night
To avert our deviation from the works
That earn a reward during the Last Judgement;
So, by the words pouring out of thy throat,
While thou keep your voice down,
I’m stabbed to the heart
And you’re stigmatized as the renegade of heaven.’
Everyone grew silent, staring
Helplessly at the King and uttering
Not a single word, yet seeming
To lisp something.
That high-souled stranger was from the far-off land,
Where letting a beard grow as long as a pine tree,
With the highest intensity of care,
Is the holiest practice, casting the spell of enchantment
Upon each and every mortal being
As well as other creatures, animals and beasts.
Snakes, zigzagging
Here and there, and crawling
Into and out of the holes of ground;
Tigers roaming and groaning in the forest;
They each have a long beard.
As the stranger, by the good grace of God, started uttering
Prudent counsels and wise precepts---
Rich with well-tuned customary terms---
The whole palace seemed
To be on the point of resounding:
‘What if the beard
Ceases to be reared?
There’s nothing save the diabolical scheme,
Smothering our ethical beam.
So it’s the only mightiest spear plastered with coal-tar,
We all meticulously bear, asking
God’s blessing on our heads
And letting the lie of matters
Like music slip into oblivion.’
Over so paradigmatic a statement Laden rhapsodized;
With so solemn a promise he felt mesmerized;
So he kept saying to his delight:
Letting the long hair grow meticulously on chin and cheek,
As is exemplified by the civilians of my friend’s land,
Is the nurse of our holy mission,
Exhausting all our time and energy.
Thus we, under our correction, must
Impalace the realm of music
On the brink of ruination, directing sincere efforts
Towards constructing a sinless Dukedom.’
The King’s searching glance like a fact-finding
Mission, roamed around the palace, seeking
To be knowledgeable of with how much gentility
And how modestly
The courtiers as well as ministers conducted themselves
Before so honorable a guest, imbued with celestial graces.
Suddenly, a thing, no longer coming to be embedded
Within the prospect of his credibility
And passing unnoticed
Beforehand, caught his eyes.
He reacted in a fury of regret,
While beating his chest noisily and unstoppably
With the palms of hands, and sorrowing for the fact
That hell-engendered evils kept dwelling on their brain:
‘All that is sacrilege to what is consecrated
To God’s service you committed.’
With a face reddening
With the stings of wrath and coyness,
At the sight of handkerchiefs---cloaking
The nose and mouse of officials---
He raised his hands towards Heaven-king,
Offering a prayer:
‘O God! Enable the sacrilegists to bow
Down to the harbinger of heaven.’
Tajeban’s beard, while trailing
Over the ground, became encrusted
With a coat of human stool, cow-dung and garbage,
Surcharging with a putrid smell the Royal House,
And nauseating everyone.
And so was the use
Of a small square piece of fabric.
By a stern, yet silent warning, begotten
Out of the King’s uneasiness,
They were riddled with threats
To remove the covering swiftly
From the space behind their lips.
Sackage along with the order of banishment,
Befell someone, seeming to be stiff-necked,
Nullifying their inalienable right to have access
To the Dukedom where they
For so long a period since the embryonic
Stage of infancy, stayed.
No matter what distorted
Smell the beard belched
Out, the King felt delighted,
Staying in comfort.
Talegban, the fattest of all hospitably and honorably
Invited to the Royal House,
And no longer worthy of exact measurement
At the first sight in terms of human structure,
Appeared outlandish with a big belly,
Out-sizing, outstripping and outgrowing his stature
Under a web of misunderstanding
In which he might be confused
With a big bladder filled with air.
With arms, bearing the closest resemblance
To timbers three times more voluminous and bigger
Than legs, he kept moving bizarrely.
He felt confusion
Flooding the deepest recess of his heart,
When he sought to satisfy a genuine curiosity
About the King’s reaction
To the virtue of gluttony,
Gamboling, skiing and riding
Along the winding street of divination.
And he, letting his heart sink a little
Within a train of hunting suspicion,
Wriggled and sweated it out, wondering
Whether he would get
His belly, as much as he desires, stuffed
Or whether he would stay unsatisfied or hungered:
‘ I am famished, I am famished;
Get me the greatest amount of food
That a man never into his mouth pushed.’
The sooner,
The better
And so was his case.
And he, on the point of stepping,
Into the Splendid House, grew shameless.
Then did he leap pell-mell into the dinning room.
Gulping down his throat the whole amount of his food,
Ready for the king’s men,
And leaving all the containers empty,
He said again and again:
‘I need more, I need more.’
The king’s spirit---staying
Apart from diabolic forces and assuming
The best form of God’s gift---
Sagged not for a moment,
While he hospitably continued to entertain
So distinguished a figure
With respect and care.
The fleeting vision, integrating
With cheers of jubilation---
More positive than ever before---
Huddled in his thoughts
And planted in stores
In his mind’s-picture-gallery happier remembrances.
Talegban appared out of Karadkhastan,
A planet, mapped out and ascertained,
Beyond the horizon of human perception,
By the emerging scholars of Laden’s Kingdom,
To be prostrate at full length
In close vicinity with the moon,
Where every half an hour both males and females eat,
And at an interval of an hour they defecate.
They, eating and defecating, defecating and eating,
Banish from their sense, the combination
Of sounds that produces
Beauty and the expression of emotion.
Happy was the King, spellbound
By the message he unfolded.
With the whole gamut of joyful feelings,
His mind came to be overloaded,
Ridding itself of so strenuous a task
Over which he always got used to brood.
‘In thee I discovered
The best exponent of the idea,
I never plumbed.
In thee I found
A first expounder of matters,
I vaguely understood.
May lovely as lovely can be befall you.
May fair as fair can be descend
On our beleaguered, myriad-peopled land.
Oh bosom friend! Blessing on thee!
At your words women will leap bold,
Being equal to the Himalayas’ proud neck.
Your device shall shepherd the female force,
Turning it into a mighty flock.
What is in my friend’s land
Common to both men and women,
Must be at full throttle, pumped here
Only into female brain.
Oh sweet friend! To sum all in brief:
I am beholden to thee a great deal!
Long should our memory be
And large our thanks to thee
For a brilliant method to enter
Into the spirit of nourishing our womankind---
Our mothers, wives, daughters and sisters.’
So powerful and assertive is a captain
That under his command,
Soldiers, in order to make conquest wing onward,
Hack a path through a jungle or mountain,
Even at their peril, and march forward.
The same was the case with Challeban,
A creature like a tile-bearded mortal being,
Adorned with brown jubbah, gliding
Down from an earth-like planet called Dabarkhistan.
And his arrival, heralded by a din,
And startlingly distinct with a lot of fanfare,
Led the King and all others to conform
To his high will and pleasure.
In a mood, fortified and bounded
By a streak of heavenish sternness and solemnity,
He spontaneously promulgated
In full all his admonitions,
So that Bin Laden and his courtiers might cease
From their long-drawn laments,
Wiping, from their souls, the sin-stains:
‘Be meticulous about your ablutions,
The only means to salvation;
Otherwise thy body as well as mind shalt suffer
Strange distortion in the summer of your might,
And thou shalt perish by violent and sudden plight.’
He kept hustling them
Into a big bathroom,
Being objectified towards aborting
The ensuing spiritual horrors
That swoop on them, crowning
Their frustrations with hell-begotten terrors.
From his pocket, he produced
Some small bottles, containing
Something like waterish liquid,
And he uncorked them, saying
Silently, yet in a voice audible to all:
‘Obay Golap, Obay Golap,
The purest water from our land.’
Then the ceremonial washing started gearing
Up for bolstering at full steam
The boundless rapture of bigotry, letting
Them smear with that holy liquid
The hands, arms, legs, bosom
And other parts of the body to cleanse
Them of sin.
How quickly Bin Laden,
With heaven-sent inspiration, moved his hands!
His action grew swifter and swifter,
Excelling those of all others.
A long-held dream to be sinless he had;
Purified by the divine thing, did he make bold,
Jeering at the bottomless pit.
How much and how great
Divine glory crowded in him!
In a sonorous voice Challeban pronounced:
‘ From so holy a land,
A land bustling with splendors of spirituality and divinity,
I made a voyage, where sounding
The name of God on our tongue
Day in, day out; week in, week out;
Month in, month out; year in, year out;
Is the only task, falling upon our shoulder.
So does our brain always dwell
On the heaven-sweet burden of holy device.
Letting the purest ingredients of goodness
Get inculcated in the celestial laboratory of our conscience
We, thus, make our character worthy
Of the highest moral rectitude.’
Prophetic vision spilled out of Bin Laden:
‘ Good Heavens! Muttering the name of Eternal Being,
Paves a gateway to the very crown and summit
Of all victories, creating a glad day-break
Following the blackest mirk of night!
With so dynamic an action, radiantly
Stuffed with the spirit of radical change,
Our kids must be encumbered!
I am bound to direct my efforts momentously
Towards absolving them
From the heaviest burden
Of a multitude of hell-brewed sins,
Weighing upon our
Fathers, relatives and other personages
We claim kindred with.’
The grinding threat of spiritual perdition
Which was and that which yet would be
Challeban wailed; and a shower of blessings
Bestowed upon the Kingdom; and a mass
Of the holy water at its service
Pledged to transmit
When were the courtiers mollified and relieved
To all appearances.
Then did they chorus in a transcendental, meditative mood:
‘ Marsha Allah, Marsha Allah, Marsha Allah.’
With hands pointing
Towards the otherworld, they mused
Under the direction of so powerful a teacher
Of divine craftsmanship:
‘ O God, help us decimate
The freshness music begets;
O God, help us smother the sensational beauty Music breeds.’
Had the nor’-wester suddenly metamorphosed
Into a mortal being, it would have plucked
Soberness, gentility, mildness and kindness
From the temple of its heart,
Bursting and steaming up with the most raging passion---
A thing that smashes and tramples
Upon everything cheerfully and jubilantly
Along the pathway it keeps striding,
Bolstering terror, sabotage and annihilation.
Blending into the violent tropical storm
And assuming so horrible a form
Of human character,
The last representative named Makaban
Appeared on wings of speed.
And he, in sanguine mood, committed the butcher’s work
Shooting so many people dead hither and thither,
And stacking the roads with corpses.
The genius of wrath-- while on the point
Of rushing pell-mell into the Palace-- let heavy armament
Boom out, pointing towards the upper sky,
And signaling his arrival.
The giant of divine art three Amazonian figures escorted.
They, in a hurried, uncontrolled way, behaved.
And they discharged near one thousand rounds of bullets
From their guns at cows, goats and elephants,
Grazing in the far-flung, grassy marshy-land.
Makaban was near five feet tall.
There issued a powerful sloganeering
Out of Makaban and his guards:
‘Nary Takbir, Nary Takbir, Nary Takbir.’
Makaban kept on saying:
‘ We are from Badarkhastan,
A planet, lying in the vicinity of the sun,
And always growing hotter and hotter
With the highest intensity.
The sun-god, working in collaboration
With his confederates, manufactures tablets
Out of the searing heat, for the inhabitants.
He, by the strong hand, entreats and compels them
To have this medicine
To save them from the road to hell.
And he gives them a mighty boon
So that they may be provoked
Into boiling over into violent action
Against the lovers of Raga.
Therefore are we out-and-out the haters
Of music, decimating and smothering
All men as well as women
Gifted with a sweet voice,
Before they go out of hand.
And we, under the bulldozers,
Grind all the musical instruments to dust.
Our land of birth comes to be shorn
Of all the devices and systems
That musicate the seamless range
Of human feelings and emotions.
How joyfully we pierce, with arrows
From bows, all the Nightingales,
Breathing out a sweet voice!
How spontaneously we burn
All books on tune to ashes, celebrating
The tumult of loud war!
Whatever the joyous spirit or whatever loveliness
The womb of thy Mother Earth sustains,
We disfigure and spoil from our planet, perceiving
The force of inbred necessity is invincible.
We rage with the implacable wrath
When a gentle, cool breeze blows.
We are not to be bent from our
Resolved intent to be at feud
With the god of wind when
He feels reluctant to send nature into a turbulent state.’
In the loudest voice they spoke;
In the roughest manner they behaved;
In the most cacophonous tone they chanted slogans;
Yet pleasant thoughts crowded in Laden’s heart,
Making him feel the discovery,
He wished to obtain for so long.
Makaban spewed out heaven-affianced message:
‘ The divine pill, impacting upon our consciousness
Made us feel enamored
Of the enticing boom of bombs or canons.
So were our uplifted, unbending, iron-braced hearts
Hewn out of thunderous sound,
Hammering our whims, tastes and fancies into unity.
There appeared a military body, plucked
From our special art--- well-founded, well-meant and well-preserved---
That imbibed heavenly inspiration
From ever-battling, strife-hatching action.
And our inner-being came to be soldierized,
Guiding us to sweep onward with reign.
Under the heaviest yoke---
Hooked to the Eternal Being---
Not a single mortal man armed
With the kaleidoscopic, expansive glimpses of science, arts
And other belongings of the universe,
Could tarry in our land
And went unpunished:
Not a person reckoned as literate;
Not a physicist;
Not a legislator.
‘ Who’re my most eligible disciples
As well as partners subscribing
To so novel an idea of a musicless Dukedom?
Whom should I take to my bosom?
Whom should I take to my bosom?’
Such were the questions
Of an unsatisfied, yet struggling spirit,
Unanswered for long,
Yet being transparently untangled
By high-souled sages of several undiscovered regions
On whose bold, unshackled tongue,
Meaningful words with all-sweet persuasion played,
Letting a newborn power grow healthy.
One afternoon, the hard-pressed Caretaker Leader,
In the likeness of stooges toadying
To the social overlords, thronged around
The mighty masters of all arts,
Kissing their foreheads, cheeks, hands
And feet with an earnest appeal:
‘Say, Guru say, what’s to be done?’
With physiognomies, spangled
With the gravest looks under a sheath of terror,
Hands, glittering with the dullest gestures,
And unfurling their unflagging and unflinching
Support as well as enthusiasm,
They each thoughtfully beat their forehead
With a brass hammer,
To the accompaniment of a thudding noise,
Letting something like an absurdist whisper
Slip into his ears.
What happened, only God knew!
But the king’s mood swept
Into a rapturous state of the highest degree---
A thing unfathomable and inconceivable,
Yet pinpointing the success
Of so long-running a scheme!
Like a goat, yet with fearsome hiss,
He sprang up three times,
Jumping with long steps
Around the throne for five minutes.
And his words kept harping
On about the garland of victory:
Our Kingdom, our policy, our dream
Will be an eternal hardy perennial.’
He, in a harsh, thundering voice,
Calling all the courtiers
Asked: Who is Orpheus?
A hanging befell those who pronounced
‘The god of music.’
Lapsing into a state of tranquility
Was no longer safe, nailing them
To the jagged rocks.
Shouting obscenities and other filthy words
Like ‘fucker’, ‘garbage’
In a taunting voice in a hundred different ways
At the greatest musician
Earned someone the highest reputation.
Bin Laden was on the rack
And a triple-crested wave of woe fell
Upon him when his art failed of the mark
To confer with exactitude the grades of authority
Upon the selected courtiers,
From the highest to the lowest.
The unshunnable imperial task came to be completed
Beyond all manners of Bin could do.
By prolonged entreaties of friends in need,
The officials were dragooned
Into laughing and crying loudly.
A savage howl, gushing
Out from someone’s throat, handed them
The most important job.
Next to them in rank were those
Who let out a string of roaring barks.
Shouting in human voice pressurized
Someone into being down-and-outs.
‘My heaven- aspiring Kingdom shall be refurbished and reconstructed
In tune with the well-designed policy and planning,
Emerging out of the thrust of brilliant ideas,
Hinted at to my delight,
By the prime of divine manhood---
The Pundits possessing true brilliance
And greatness in their souls---
So that I might build up one
Of the world’s loveliest paradises.
And so were the steps being initialized
One by one strenuously.
And there appeared ever among the first
In the administration, a force
Capable of orchestrating a never-ending battle
Against what existed in the form of learning,
Breeding the impulse of life---
Free as birds,
Joyful as music
And colorful as love.
Enlightenment, begotten out of the ‘Prohibited Fruit’
Under the Satanic influence,
Creates a universe where human being,
Once entangled, finds nothing save
The World of Nightingale, echoing
The unvanquished, unbending and effervescent
Spirit of joy, and gingering up five senses;
The serene, blue sky furnishing human mind
With a great deal of contentment
In close association with the plenitude
Of sensational, bucolic beauty;
Men and women growing close to each other;
Boys as well as girls
Skipping, playing and dancing;
A fountain of joy, passion and ecstasy
Streaming out of the harmonic movement
Of the slender feet of young women;
A stage adroitly constructed,
Reflecting on some extracts
From the labyrinthine complexities of life;
An opera, against the run of universal code of practice,
Showing mum pass the night
On the same bed with her son;
A rhythmic tempo, gushing out from nature’s bosom,
And never running contrary
To the spacious amplitude of earthly existence;
The gust of libidinous imagination, slogging
Its guts out and hastening
A craving for lustful pleasure;
The sin of pride offending
The ruler and creator of the world;
Knowledge, integrating with the spirit of skepticism,
And denying the existence of God;
Proud thoughts trivializing the glimpses of spirituality;
The high-crested mortal thrust of self-willed wisdom,
Buffeting the unmatchable, sacrosanct spirit of prophets
Who descended on the earth on a holy mission
To rectify all of mankind’s fullness age after age;
The Promethean spark of fire helping
Mankind rise out of all-gracious, medieval ethical-code;
And the maladies of love, becoming one
With blasphemous norms as well as ideas,
And corrupting senses.
Never shall the path under my umbrella
Be smoothed towards the fruit of knowledge,
That breeds the greatest rhythmic motion of music.
Never shall the path under my umbrella
Be smoothed towards the distinguisher of true wisdom,
Who, in the overture of his art,
Begets the biggest musical flow of life.’
So, at full gallop, the wholesale destruction
Was visited upon the focal point of learning;
Schools, colleges, universities ground to dust;
The King, bursting with peals of laughter,
‘Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha, ha ha’,
Hurled bombs at the music institutions.
Laden’s order resounded through the Palace:
‘All the musicists be throttled,
All the lyricists be held captive,
All the tune-makers be banished.’
Under no circumstances did the King
Banish it from his sense that a woman’s
Femininity, electrified with romance,
Would be the most awful thing
In the bosom of his Empire,
Making joy synonymous with beauty.
Bin Laden mused:
‘ Women---if allowed to move freely
And when not a barrier is thrown
Up along their pathway--- celebrate
A longed-for moment with their fiancés,
Spurring a sea-change in nature,
And unearthing a new phase of life
In harmony with music.’
An overpowering prophecy spouted
Out of the King:
‘Here upon the earth as well as in the celestial
Abode of God, angels
And beautified spirits lies Male--
The heaven-sprung descendants of mankind--
Under the baleful influence
Of hell-born beetles called, Female.
Only from feminine multitude of ills
Sprouts an unapproachable, yet real and natural surge
Of imprudence, jealousy, fraudulence and treachery
Dashing human hopes into ruin,
And leading to stark destruction.
Mind’s firm masterdom for Eve’s part dwindles at first,
Hastening the migration of the first man, Adam,
From the loveliest Garden of Eden
To the ugliest Earth,
And the creation of cosmos
As the breeding ground of all untoward incidents,
Ranging from the fall of Troy
To the tragedy of Duncan.
Athena, Hera and Aphrodite, in all likelihood, being vamps,
Turn the mosque of our heart
Into a dumping ground,
And cajole us into committing the most awful crimes.
Let their image become emblematic of annihilation.
They are vampires,
Sucking up our finest spirit
And injecting certain ungodly attributes among us:
Animating the course of life by means
Of further impaction of the dribbling dart of love;
An unstoppable overflow of emotion, joy
And ecstasy issuing out of human heart;
The taste of a thieving kiss;
The graceful charm of existence;
The uncontrollable vivacity as well as passions of youth
And other forms of wickedness.
So women to be locked up very soon;
Women to be locked up very soon.
They deflate the enigma
Of Divine Providence
And make the whole universe musical.
So they be fettered
To the abrasive rocks as early as possible.
A lesson to be extracted from the global history;
Female-beings, in so many regions,
Having recourse to the magic of Mephistopheles
Let their emotional spectrum slip into oblivion and feel
Restrained to stay in.
In myriads of institutions , the cursed ones
Stationing themselves side by side with men,
And endlessly winding
On, by dint of incomparable might;
And over male-beings they gain ascendancy and domineer,
Winning the garland of victory.
So they must be straitened in certain bonds,
Contrived by the chieftains of the Blest,
So that they may stand untrammeled
Under no circumstances.
We, of our own volition, must frame the legislation
To which they shall be subjected.
And we must shatter and crush their impulsive desire
Under our jackboots, celebrating our lordship.’
Bin’s decision in harmony with the run
Of his Kingdom, proved effective,
Converting women to angels in the house.
Stoning and flagellation befell those
Who, succumbing to the marvels
Of Black Art, went astray.
The softest thing to be loathed at any cost;
The hardest thing to be loved and appreciated
In the midst of thousands of dangers;
To a promise we always stick obsequiously.
So our battlesome demeanor- nourished
By means of armed forces, continuously
Tending towards holding wars-
Is the only instrument to prove:
‘We are the bravest of the brave;
We are the strongest of the strong;
We are the noblest of the noble.’
Laden’s mission, in every nook and cranny
Of the broad and ample Empire,
Instantaneously went into action,
Setting all hearts on fire,
And belching out an warning
Against the aims or ambitions
Clashing with the qualities befitting soldiership.
The immensely distinguished activists,
In the vanguard of revolution, were considered
To be the best offspring
Among the subjects of that monarch.
People, on the verge of unfurling a passionate desire
To be adroit at the functions
Of physicians, engineers, teachers and technicians,
Infringing the institutionalization
Of supreme order, were traced out.
And they, under his command, met a tragic end
Under the wheels of the moving train.
The Kings groans and grumbles and wriggles and frets
When the plumpness of the innermost feelings emblematic
Of sumptuous braggadocio, is unpredictably smitten
By the bolt of his amorous desire.
And he hastily sends his soul to Lord of love and passion.
At one extreme, he, at loggerheads with his spirit,
Ever hard and overbold, continuously whimpers and wails aloud.
And he gives a heart-piercing cry,
As if a deluge of sufferings, beyond all depths of sorrow,
Had descended upon the Dukedom!
One night, he, driven restless
By his libido, had a mania
For a Psyche.
Sensing the nature of that surpassing trouble,
Befalling him, the courtiers, under the cloak of darkness,
Abducted a young lady, gagged her
And then held her captive inside his chamber.
The girl’s physique is identical
With all the loveliness, freshness and softness
Of the universe that can spur
His warm-hearted action.
But the Royal Person, growing apathetic
About her beauty, kept slapping,
Kicking and lashing her randomly,
Until she cried aloud:
‘Kill me not;
With you I’m ready to go to bed .’
She---while he was on the verge
Of extracting fleshly pleasure from her body---
Uttered certain words politely:
‘Use a contraceptive please.’
Bin’s countenance, at the very request,
Was marked with a touch of paleness,
As if a witch had appeared to spoil and deflower
Manifold divine inventions ready for mankind!
He said again and again:
‘ Astag Ferullah!
Nouzoo Billah!’
The head of a sinless Dukedom am I,
With all good gifts, constituting
The harmony of the Divine Mind!
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
How dare thou on wayward intention of yours
Let such nasty words
Spew out of thy mouth!
O God! The thought be far from us!
How could thou pluck up courage
To bamboozle me into taking advantage
Of things stained with hell-hued, black sin,
Misprizing all manners of heaven-affianced arts we sustain!
How dare thou instigate me
Into desecrating our holy land!’
At long last, the innocent girl, tragically perished
At a blow, originating from legal proceedings.
Laden’s last brilliant, sharp-set words
Squirting from his subtle brain, transparently unearthed
His art to be at the service of humanity:
‘We all are fallen and faded
With the indefatigable march of time;
Transitory is human situation upon the earth;
Yet we are slanted towards a shower
Of ever-during praise and thanks,
Adam’s offspring might tender us.
Since the very moment we have
The heaven-sent opportunity
To view the light of day,
We grow up bit by bit, crumb by crumb;
And we, at one extreme, come
To be crumpled and crushed;
Yet we ventilate our up-boiling desire
To swallow the food of immortality.
Vain, vain the holy mission,
While, not serving the global purpose!
So are we bound to execute the task
Our conscience laid on us,
In adamantine bonds inviolable.
We must strain every nerve
To send our message
To a vast multitude of wights,
Dwelling across the broad territory
From the North to the South Pole.
Welcome will all iridescent instruments
Of corruption, deceit and lies be
When they inexorably hasten our wage
For playing the lover of mankind.
All our efforts will be a bit
Of a fiasco save money.
The blessings of the elephant-god, Ganesha
We now seek to win;
Therefore are we absolutely determined
To boost the plantation of heroine.’
The plot of the poem:
Bin Laden appears with his rock-solid integrity and determination to render his dukedom musicless. Because music, as he believes, springs from a spirit of diabolic enjoyment, contaminating all the freshness, sublimity and sanctity of human thoughts or opinions about the world. He consults four God-given counselors who came from unknown realms of space. Tajeban, the first adviser is descended from a planet where the inhabitants are always busy ‘letting a beard grow as long as a pine tree’ and they banish the sense of music as such. The second consultant named Talegban is from a planet where people exhaust all their time and energy on eating and excreting waste materials from body by turns. And they don’t grow curious about the combination of sounds capable of producing beauty and the expression of emotion.
The third consultant, named, Challeban, advises him how to instigate an ever-battling spirit against music. He purifies them by means of holy water. He unfolds his desire to supply a mass of holy water likely to be at their service. The fourth counselor named Makaban is from a planet where people encourage military activities and kill musicists. The king quickly understands the utility of ideas he gets from the divine representatives. And he takes a decision to take advantage of them in the construction of his holy empire.
The king pumps suggestions out of scholars from unknown worlds as he confers the grades of authority upon the courtiers. A fact dawns upon Bin Laden that the latest forms of knowledge extracted from the womb of modernism, become synonymous with music and run contrary to the ethical code of practice he encourages. A truth reaches his realization that women are the hell-born creatures, committing a multitude of sins every moment. He, for the welfare of his dukedom, decides quickly to rear them in captivity.
The royal person celebrates militarism at full gallop. People who are on the verge of adopting other professions, casting aside the importance of soldiership, are traced out and killed. From time to time, the king responds to the call of his libido. He, even while violating the chastity of a woman, brings about an exposure of his fanatical approach to life. The kings grows enchanted with the prospect of getting immortalized. The intention of spreading his ideals among the global community descends upon him. But he urgently feels that his attempt is in vain without the driving force of money. So he is determined to boost the plantation of heroine.
An analysis of the poem
Mock epic, also Mock-Heroic, is a form of satire that adapts the elevated heroic style of the classical epic to a trivial subject. It involves the use of humor, irony or exaggeration in order to show how foolish or wicked some people’s behavior or ideas are. The tradition which originated in classical times with an anonymous burlesque of Homer, the Batrachomyomachia( Battle of the Frogs and the mice), was honed to a fine art in the late17- and early 18- century classical Neoclassical period. A double-edged satirical weapon, the mock-epic was sometimes used by the ‘moderners’ of this period to ridicule contemporary ancients(classicists). More often, it was used by ancients to point up the heroic character of the age by subjecting thinly distinguished contemporary events to a heroic treatment. The classical example of this is Nicolas Boileau’s Lutrin (The Lectern;1674-83). Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battle of the Books(1704) is a variation of this theme in mock-epic prose. The outstanding English mock epic is Alexander Pope’s brilliant tour de force The Rape of the Lock(1714), which concerns a society beau’s theft of a lock of hair from a society belle.
Most mock epics begin with an invocation to muse and incorporate the familiar epic machinery of set speeches, supernatural interventions and descents to the underworld , as well as infinitely detailed descriptions of their protagonists’ activities. Thus they provide considerable scope for display of the author’s ingenuity and inventiveness. Before developing a vigorous understanding of the poem entitled, ‘The Kingdom of Bin Laden’, let us grow familiar with who the Talebans are. The most noticeable trait of the Talebans is that they let their beards grow as long as they can. A beard, as they believe, can absolve them from sin. Such a tendency originates from the fact that they are caught in the ideological straitjacket of religious fanaticism. They mix up in their dull brain morality and theologies. The ethical code of practice they encourage imposes a prohibition on the cultivation of music. They give credence to the fact that they can become pure and sinless by inserting the realm of music on the brink of extinction. As such they drag humankind down to the level of inferior beasts.
‘The Kingdom of Bin Laden’ begins with the sweetest tune of Krishna’s bamboo-flute. All earth-bound or celestial creatures worship the god. But Bin takes an exception to all of them. The moral and ethical standards to which he keeps clinging spring from religious bigotry. He regards beauty and the expression of emotion, emerging out of the god’s pipe, as constituting a spirit of diabolic enjoyment. So he is on a mission to render his empire holy by casting aside the musical flow of life. Here the satirical effect is enhanced when the king is serious about so meaningless a task. And a reader can’t but laugh when he discovers that Laden’s careful consideration becomes mingled with stupidity of the highest order.
Marhaba!Marhaba!Marhaba!
What a sweet noise!
The aforementioned lines increase the mock-epic effect. Bin Laden is disgruntled with the sweetest melody, gushing out of Krishna’s pipe whereas he feels enchanted with a very loud and unpleasant noise that a group of boys produces. The way Bin Laden gives praise and appreciation to Tajeban’s beard brings about an exposure of his foolishness and hollowness. Readers burst with peals of laughter as they find that the king feels easy and delighted even when the beard gives out a distorted smell. The king’s encounter with the second counselor shows the way he curbs the blooming intrinsic female force. He decides to prevent the emancipation of women by imposing the most reactionary form of puritanical mode of living upon them.
Women, in harmony with his policy, shall exhaust their time and energy on eating and defecating by turns. The conversation Bin Laden strikes up with the third counselor also increases the satirical effect. Readers, when they find that a man can easily purify his body by means of holy water, begin to laugh. His meeting with the fourth consultant named Makaban reflects on how militarism constitutes the ideological make-up of Talebans. How the process of Talebanization absolutely abandons music is clearly manifested in the words Makaban utters. Bin’s activities create a paradoxical situation. The design of a holy empire is always on his lip whereas he doesn’t feel restrained to violate the chastity of a woman. Here again his fanatical behavior is exposed when he ignores a girl’s request to use a contraceptive, explaining that it is stained with sin.
An epic may deal such subjects as myths, heroic legends, history, edifying religious tales, animal stories or philosophical or moral theories. Epic poetry has been used by people all over the world and in different ages to transmit their traditions from one generation to another, without the aid of writing. These traditions frequently consist of legendary narratives about the glorious deeds of their national heroes. ‘The Kingdom of Bin Laden’ uses the elevated style of the classical epic to show how devotedly the King is pledge-bound to build up an unmusical dukedom. Mock epic effect increases when the king says:
‘Never shall the path under my umbrella
Be smoothed towards the fruit of knowledge.’
Notes on Mythical figures and references from the Islamic Scripture:
Krishna-Krishna is the god of music, emerging out of the fascinating world of two great Sanskrit Epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata , which date back over two thousand years and furnish the basic beliefs of Hindus and Buddhists. He is identified with Vishnu and Rama.
Marhaba- The Muslims pronounce the word ‘Marhaba’ to welcome anything.
Marhsa Allah-The Muslims pronounce the word ‘Marsha Allah’(what Allah wishes) as a way of being complimentary about God.
Nary Takbir-The Muslims pronounce the word ‘Nary Takbir when they proclaim the glory of God.
Astag Ferullah-The Muslims pronounce the word ‘Astag Ferullah’( I do beg God’s pardon) as a way of apologizing for doing something wrong.
Nauzoo Billah-The Muslims pronounce the word ‘Nauzoo Billah’ when they seek God’s help.
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